


Victory in the Making

by ellacj



Series: 52 Weeks of Swan Queen [30]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Child Abuse, F/F, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Not for the faint of heart, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 02:51:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4462709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellacj/pseuds/ellacj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Never a lip is curved with pain that can't be kissed into smiles again."</p><p>-Bret Harte</p>
            </blockquote>





	Victory in the Making

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Write a character's life in five pages, then one page, one paragraph, one sentence, and one word.
> 
> in other news it's week 30 already what the FUCK

**The Life of Regina Mills in Five Pages:**

The story begins on a cold February day with a heartless aspiring queen and a squalling baby. From the day she’s born, the baby’s life is planned out to the day. “Her name is Regina,” her mother pronounces as she holds her child for the subjects to see. “For one day, she will be queen.”

Despite being raised by a woman lacking her heart, Regina is a sweet and gentle child. Had she been allowed to interact with the children in the village, she’d likely have many friends. But her reality rests with Cora. Each morning she has work to do in the house or in the stables, and each afternoon are lessons with her mother.

She doesn’t enjoy the lessons. Cora’s magic has always frightened her, made her sick to her stomach, and she always vowed never to follow in her mother’s footsteps. So she spends her afternoons doting around in gowns she hates, reciting promises she won’t even consider keeping.

“Mother?” she asks the day following her tenth birthday. “Now that I’m older, may I have my own horse?”

Cora simply turns up her nose at the idea, but her father agrees wholeheartedly. Cora’s glare assures Regina that her father will be punished for it later, but, selfishly, she brings herself to ignore it at the prospect of learning to ride. “Thank you, Daddy!” she exclaims as she throws her arms around him against every lesson her mother has ever taught her.

 _You’re going to be a queen someday_ , Cora scolds in her head. _Queens do not squeal, nor do they_ hug _._ In her mind, Regina winces away from her mother’s skilled hand, and in her body, she slowly pulls away from her father and ducks her head to stare at the ground.

“Lift your chin, darling. Queens do not slouch.”

With that, Regina pushes through the sudden cloud that has fallen over heart and pushes her chin up to look her father in the eye with what she hopes is an unreadable expression. “Thank you, Father,” she says coolly. The look of pride on her mother’s face both makes her heart soar and her stomach drop, and she hates how she craves approval from her own personal monster in her closet.

“Now, why don’t you go to bed while I speak to your father about this horse?”

“Yes, Mother.”

Regina cries that night, just as she has most nights lately. Living under her mother’s roof is no walk in the park, yet still she endures, still she wakes up every morning to fight the same demons that left her so tired the day before. The maid once told her that was bravery. All she knows is cowardice.

She’s never been brave, and her mother knows that about her. She takes advantage of it. When she’s fifteen, starting to become a woman, her mother touches her in a way far opposite to scolding slaps and rough holds on her arm.

Every time it happens, Regina hates herself for being grateful. But, the fact is, this kind of attention is better than any punishment her mother gives. She’d much rather sit through some time feeling dirty and used than come away from a fight bloodied and bruised as she has so many times. She’s considered ending it all, stringing herself up from the rafters of the barn, but her mother raised her better than that.

And so every day she fights, revels in tiny acts of defiance like coming into the house with dirty riding pants or leaving her hair loose and tangled until her mother has to remind her to brush it. Her small rebellion grows as she gets older, and by the time she’s seventeen and in love with a stable boy, she finds she’s beyond caring what her mother will do to her. Daniel will take care of her. He’ll always be there to catch her.

Until he isn’t.

Cora held the heart of the boy Regina loved in her hand and crushed it into nothing, and the next day she sent her daughter off to marry a man old enough to be her father. “You’ll grow to love him, darling,” she coos on the morning of the wedding as she weaves Regina’s hair into some elaborate style. “And look, you’ll finally be the queen you were always destined to be.”

“But I don’t want to be queen, Mother. I just want love.”

There’s a sharp tug at the back of her head as Cora’s fingers tighten in her hair. “You’re going to be a queen,” she hisses, all pretenses of motherly affection thrown out the window. “Queens don’t talk back.”

“I thought the queen was the most powerful person in the land,” Regina snaps bitterly.

“A queen knows her place.” The last pin is placed in raven locks, and Cora sits back to admire her work. “And she strives for perfection.”

Regina’s first night with the king is eerily similar to all those nights when her mother took control and she was powerless. If she closes her eyes, she can pretend she’s still with Daniel, that he’s still alive and not lying cold in the ground at the stables. She can pretend he’s still waiting for her.

It takes a year before she goes a full week without crying for him. Tinker Bell is no replacement for the love she lost, but she makes Regina happy in the absence of true happiness. Regina loves the way Tink’s hair grows big and curly in the rain and the way her hands grip Regina’s with a strength and a confidence even Daniel didn’t have.

Even still, she has to say that her time with Maleficent healed her more than Tink ever did. They were explosive, the two of them, Regina throwing spells at trees with Mal’s hand guiding hers until the sun sets and she can show off the skills she developed over years of her mother’s tutelage.

Of course she falls in love.

How could she not, when for the first time in her life she’s actually good enough, is earning praise from the person she most admires, falls into bed with her each night as though their future is a beautifully packaged dream in a sealed envelope?

“I love you,” she says to Mal one day.

Mal simply sighs and drops her head into her hands as though Regina’s feelings are ultimately inconvenient to her. “I should have known this would happen. Look, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you to find someone amazing.”

“ _You’re_ amazing.”

“I can’t love, Regina. Don’t you get that?” Mal shakes her head. “Love is weakness. And I’ll _never_ be weak.”

“You’re not.”

Mal gestures to the door of the great stone castle. “You should go. Your work here is done, anyway. I only kept you around because I’m lonely.”

“What will you do when I’m gone?”

“I’ll get a pet.” She shrugs. “It’s better this way.”

And so Regina leaves with head down, wishing she’d never said anything. Because once again she’s suffering because someone else decided they know what’s best for her. It’s then that she makes her decision. Leopold will die.

And Snow White will suffer.

She works tirelessly for over ten years finding the curse, and when she finally does find it it’s in the possession of none other than Maleficent herself. And indeed, Mal has gotten herself a pet, a tiny black unicorn that she’ll protect with her life.

Regina chuckles to herself when she realizes that. “Oh, my dear Maleficent,” she says in a low, dangerous voice as she leans down to pick the curse up from the ground. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that love is weakness?”

Killing her father is no easy feat. She cries to herself for three nights before she can bring herself to throw it in the fire in the name of the Dark Curse. “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she whispers as the flames engulf it and black smoke rises over the entire land.

She finds she quite prefers Storybrooke to the Enchanted Forest. Her hair is much more manageable with its short length and the spread of tools this world offers, her breasts are free from the confines of corsets, and she doesn’t miss relieving herself in a clay pot she empties out the window. Moreover, this town provides her with a second chance, to be someone other than the evil queen they all feared back home.

If only she didn’t feel so empty.

Maleficent warned her of this, before she was sent to the pit below Storybrooke, and Regina can feel it clawing at her from inside every day for eighteen years. Shockingly, the little boy who began as a thorn in her side fills the hole for just a few days before he’s gone forever.

“I need a child, Gold,” she demands of the man who once took everything from her. There’s something suspicious about the way he doesn’t demand a trade, but she doesn’t question it at the prospect of finally finding someone to love her unconditionally, someone to whom she can give everything, someone to hold her heart in their hand and never even consider crushing it the way her Mother always threatened to.

Henry is the most beautiful boy Regina’s ever seen, and raising him makes her happier than she’s ever been. He’s like a ray of sunlight cutting through the darkness of her life, and the more time he spends in her care, the more pink spreads through her heart. She sings him to sleep each night and each morning she makes him breakfast before school.

She really doesn’t understand when he starts pulling away. Shortly after his tenth birthday he starts breaking rules he’s followed for years, he spends more time in his room alone, he’s sullen and snappy in her presence, and she feels herself panicking.

She was the same way under her mother’s thumb. Determined not to let Henry end up like her, she takes him to see Dr. Hopper twice a week in hopes that he can help. “I just want him to be happy,” she tells the doctor before their first appointment. “And he won’t tell me how to make that happen.”

Archie nods thoughtfully. “You seem quite passionate about this specific set of instances. Is this possibly a personal issue?”

“He’s my son. His problems are my problems.”

Regina doesn’t find out about the book until that day in October when Henry runs up the walk with the Swan woman trailing behind him, and she tells Regina herself in a slip of tongue.

It’s a rough year for the two of them, one of them cold and calculated and the other fierce and emotional. In the end, however, they both love Henry and can unite in that if nothing else.

When Emma breaks her precious curse Regina finds herself running toward home with Henry on her mind the whole way. The news that Emma and Snow are trapped in the other world barely fazes her because Henry is okay, Henry is alive, Henry is _gone_.

Setting out to break herself away from magic is one of the hardest things she’s had to do, but with Henry’s smile in her mind’s eye she finds she doesn’t even need to consider choosing her power.

Even still, it hurts when Henry runs right past her to hug Emma when she climbs out of the well.

Emma and Regina form a sort of truce after that, and when the woman beginning to live up to her Savior title follows her out of the diner that night Regina finds her heart skipping beats and the word _love_ itching to roll off her tongue. Instead, she says “Thank you” and “I’m sorry” which, in her book, are just alternate phrasings for that treacherous word that’s cost her so much.

Emma doesn’t seem to understand that, however, and she goes back into the warmth of the diner and her friends while Regina walks home without even her son to look forward to seeing.

It’s a blur, really, the rest of that year, but she remembers vividly the time she spends in the Enchanted Forest without her son or her blonde idiot to keep her company. For the third time in her life she considers saying goodbye to all she’s ever known in favor of peaceful darkness.

Somehow she convinces herself to fight – or maybe it’s Snow, how can she be sure – and she soon finds herself back in town with Emma Swan saying she loves her and Henry calling her “Madame Mayor” and Regina doesn’t know how she’s meant to feel about any of this. All she knows is that Mal once told her that it’s impossible to love anyone if you don’t love herself, but when Emma looks at her with stars in her eyes, Regina loves her so much she forgets what it is to hate herself.

Henry remembers her in time, her sister takes her hand when she offers it, and for the first time in a long time things look okay. Henry seems to get older every time she blinks, but with Emma’s hand gripping hers and Emma’s lips on her cheek and Emma’s eyes capturing her own she finds she doesn’t need to yearn for the old days.

These days are pretty good.

Her house once felt too big for her, back when she had to find a way to fill all the rooms by herself, but now, with her son and her sister and the woman she was always meant to love, it finally feels like a home.

She closes the door behind her after a day at work and hears a bubble of laughter drifting in from the living room, and a smile gently crosses her face. After nearly seventy years of life she’s finally made it here, and she finds that she doesn’t regret anything.

It isn’t the end, but oh, is it happy.

* * *

 

**The Life of Regina Mills in One Page:**

Childhood is rough for Regina, to say the least. Raised by a heartless woman full of ambition, she spends her early years learning to shut her mouth and follow directions lest her rebellion be punished. Her dream of love has never been important; the only dream that counts is her mother’s, of producing a queen. And so Regina keeps quiet and parades around in billowing dresses with perfect balance until the times when she can slip away with Rocinante as if in a dream.

Daniel offers a brief reprieve, a glimmer of hope in the bleakness of Cora’s plan, but when Snow White and her father come along the light is snuffed out along with her dreams of riding off with Rocinante and never seeing her mother again. Even after the knowledge of Snow’s betrayal is brought to life, Regina finds it difficult to hate her. She reminds Regina so much of herself, falling under Cora’s spell and suffering because of it.

Even still, she manages. Those ten years of pain are made bearable only by Tinker Bell and Maleficent, but they, too, end in time. The curse brings her ultimate relief. Snow and her prince will suffer, she will reign supreme in the new world, and no one will remember her past transgressions. She can start anew.

For eighteen years she runs Storybrooke with an inexplicably empty heart, and she doesn’t quite realize what’s missing until Owen. And after he slips out of her reach, her beautiful boy comes into her life and suddenly everything feels complete. Henry grows up exactly the way Regina always wished she could, with love all around and everything he could ever want.

Except, apparently, Miss Swan. That sheepish little wave on the first day does nothing to remedy the pain searing Regina’s heart, and for the rest of that year Regina toes the dangerous line between cold distance and true evil.

It’s such a shock when she falls in love. She’s not sure of when it happens, but she knows that outside Granny’s on the day Emma returns from dancing with the Queen of Hearts Regina can barely stop herself from kissing her.

Robin is a comfort in the other world for that year when her family has left her cold and longing, but when she finds herself back in the manor and a yellow bug parked on Main Street the warmth she feels bursting inside of her has her cutting ties with him and surging to connect her lips with thin pink ones. She’s always been cautious with her heart, but Emma makes her want to scream the word “love” from the rooftops because Emma doesn’t make her weak, she makes her _strong_ and she’s quickly becoming addicted to the feeling of being loved.

She sees herself in Snow, and the broken ginger-haired orphan sitting in front of her reminds her so much of herself and so much of Emma that it’s no hesitation for her to put out her hand and offer a second chance.

Zelena moves into the mansion and so do Emma and Henry and for the first time, laughter bubbles in from every room of the once too-empty house. The manor is filled with love and she can’t imagine what it ever felt like to wish for death. She dredged herself up from pain and loneliness and built this perfect life for herself and she’s so glad she never let herself give up.

Any regrets she ever had have been tossed away in lieu of a life of love.

* * *

 

**The Life of Regina Mills in One Paragraph:**

It begins with a loveless queen. Regina pushes through the first seventeen years of her life with a cold, quiet dignity, until she becomes a wife and a mother and a slave to the people all at once. It takes ten more years to find escape from the torture that is her marriage to the king, and on the day the curse hits she feels so full that the emptiness Storybrooke brings feels foreign to her. She pushes through another eighteen years of cold, quiet dignity until one day she discovers the joy that a family can bring. The family of a mother and her son soon grows to include a sister and a true love’s kiss, and before long Regina realizes that her family makes her anything but weak. The love of the people around her make her heart so full that she can’t be anything other than strong. Her story is long, difficult, and winds in endless directions, but it absolutely has happiness as its conclusion. It begins with a loveless queen, and it ends with a different queen more filled with love than she’s ever known possible.

* * *

 

**The Life of Regina Mills in One Sentence:**

Through endless trials, loves gained and loves lost, a cruel husband and a sister she never knew, she finds solace in constant of her own heart, filled with darkness yet somehow pure still.

* * *

 

**The Life of Regina Mills in One Word:**

Worthwhile.


End file.
